Man invents machine to convert plastic into oil

The Power Haus by Josh Wynne Construction: The Energy Positive House ( -22 HERS Index Home)

The ‘Power Haus’ by Josh Wynne Construction in Sarasota, Florida has achieved the lowest HERS rating on record in the U.S., a negative 22, with an elegant, well-crafted design. Earning 118 LEED points the home is just shy of also becoming the highest scoring LEED home in the country by 1.5 points to the Helenowski Residence in Chicago, which holds the highest known score at 119.5.

With a negative HERS score, the Power Haus is producing more energy than it consumes on a yearly net basis. The home has a 14.2 kW Uni-Solar Flex-Lite amorphous silica (peel and stick) array to bring it into so-called climate positive territory. Not considering the solar, Power Haus would still achieve a 42 HERS index which is noteworthy in and of itself. They were able to achieve such energy savings through a variety of passive and technological applications.

Jetson Green

Drilling off Cuba and Alaska, Drilling Safety and the Carbon Experiment

The quest for more oil. President Obama has announced new plans to expand domestic oil drilling, although in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, he insists on stringent safety measures. Anchor Thalia Assuras looks at his plans.

Meanwhile, Cuba announces it will begin drilling for oil this year in the Gulf of Mexico, just 60 miles from the Florida keys. Can it be done safely? Thalia travels to Trinidad for a rare Cuban appearance at a U.S. sponsored oil conference, where the plans are detailed. She talks to Cuba's "Grandfather of Oil," who insists that the country has the know-how to drill safely in deep water. But others, including a Florida International University professor, worry that the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba will prevent the necessary response to a catastrophic spill. Next up, Correspondent Dan Goldstein explores what planned offshore drilling in Alaska might mean to the remote town of Point Hope, whose indigenous Inupiat people count on an annual whaling expedition to feed the entire town for a year.

Royal Dutch Shell wants to drill for billions of gallons of oil beneath the Beaufort and Ckukchi Seas, and the revenue could help bring Point Hope into the 21st Century - paying to renovate its recreation center, build roads and modernize buildings. Then, on "The Mix," Anchor Thalia Assuras joins Rayola Dougher, senior economic advisor for the American Petroleum Institute, Anna Aurilio, federal director of Environment America, and Daniel Whittle, Cuba program director at Environmental Defense Fund, to discuss President Obama's plans to speed up onshore and offshore drilling, as well as the economic and
environmental implications of Cuba's offshore drilling push. This week's "Energy Then" comes from 1969, when Scotland unveiled the world's first self-propelled, oceangoing drilling vessel, the Offshore Mercury. The rig could travel 7,000 without replenishment, an advancement that the Scots said would revolutionize deep sea drilling.

UNEP wants to sharpen awareness for sustainable building

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has issued an appeal for better utilization of the climate protection potential of buildings, which account for roughly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Speaking in Leverkusen on Tuesday, Arab Hoballah, Chief of the Sustainable Consumption and Production Branch of UNEP, said that the primary need is to sharpen the awareness of policy makers, market actors and other stakeholders of the need for and opportunities afforded by sustainable building.

Leverkusen was the venue of the Annual General Meeting and Symposium on Sustainable Buildings 2011 of the UNEP’s Sustainable Buildings and Climate Initiative (SBCI), held for the first time ever in Germany. SBCI-member Bayer MaterialScience hosted and sponsored the event. Hoballah told the roughly 150 experts from around the world that the stakeholders have not yet recognized that sustainable building is a viable business model. According to him, environmentally friendly buildings not only help to conserve energy and avoid emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, they also help improve peoples’ quality of life. “Working in sustainable offices and factories is unequivocally good for your health.”

Hoballah said that it is particularly important for the various stakeholders in the building sector to network more intensely to share best practices and to combine their know-how. This is the approach taken by the EcoCommercial Building Program (ECB), a unique, global network of experts under the leadership of Bayer MaterialScience. It follows a holistic planning approach that incorporates the building design, the use of innovative materials and the latest technologies for the generation of renewable energy, for example, from the outset. The respective geographic and climatic conditions are also considered.
Patrick Thomas, CEO of Bayer MaterialScience, pointed out the importance of effective insulating materials at the conference. “Insulating boards made of rigid polyurethane foam save around 70 times more energy during their service life than is required for their production.” A variety of other aspects of the topic, such as renewable energies, urban development and climate policy, were also discussed at the conference.

Another topic was a new measurement method developed by the SBCI to obtain globally standard performance indicators for energy consumption and the greenhouse gas emissions of buildings. This Common Carbon Metric (CCM) is intended to enable an internationally coherent standard. The aim is to establish a consistent method for measuring CO2 equivalents and for collecting and analyzing the data. The new tool is also intended to help identify, compare and evaluate advances in emissions reduction relative to certain building types in various climate zones.

Buildings account for roughly 40 percent of world-wide energy consumption and each year emit around 8.6 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalents – as much as is emitted by Germany, China and Japan combined. According to worst-case estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this could nearly double to almost 16 billion metric tons by 2030. At the same time, in no other sector can emissions be reduced as comprehensively and economically. According to the IPCC, existing products and technologies could reduce the energy consumption of both existing buildings and new buildings by between 30 and 50 percent by 2020 – without significant additional costs.

Bayer is also the first company in the world to enter a long-term partnership with the UNEP in the area of youth and the environment. This cooperation focuses on children and young people from all over the world who are interested in environmental issues and committed to protecting the world around them. The partners jointly aim is to support young people in their commitment to the environment, to expand their knowledge of the environment, to foster the global exchange of experience by building up networks. For this purpose, Bayer and UNEP organize a dozen environmental projects for children and young people around the world every year. So far, more than two million young people have participated in these projects and thus benefited directly from this unique partnership. Bayer supports the joint projects to the tune of €1.2 million annually.

All-Energy: The UK's largest renewables event

All-Energy 2011 has now closed. Provisional indications are that over 8,000 from more than 50 countries attended over the two days, establishing a new record.

Held at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre, All-Energy welcomed 580+ exhibitors, offered a free to attend multi-stream conference (presentations will go online just as fast as we can manage it!), which included an up-beat video message from First Minister, Alex Salmond MSP in which he pledged to move "still faster and further" to secure Scotland's place as the green energy powerhouse of Europe. The show hosted numerous networking events- including of course the Giant Networking Evening when dodgems made a very welcome return! Click here to relive elements of the show thanks to Cleantech Investor's interviews that were live thoughout the show.

Watch All-Energy online

Norway to donate billions for clean energy

Norway wants to channel billions of dollars to renewable energies in developing nations, building on a scheme to protect tropical forests to which Oslo has been the biggest donor, officials said. With cash to spare as the world's number six oil exporter, Norway wants governments and private investors to join a plan it calls Energy+ to promote green energies such as solar or wind power to combat climate change.

"Energy+ is an initiative to promote access to energy and low-carbon development" in developing nations, according to an internal document from the Ministry of International Development obtained by Reuters. Developed countries promised in 2009 to raise climate aid to $100 billion a year by 2020, to help developing nations curb emissions of greenhouse gases and adapt to impacts such as floods, droughts, heat waves and rising seas.

Source: Montreal Gazette

Nuke fuel meltdown confirmed at three Fukushima reactors

The operator of Japan's troubled nuclear power plant's confirmed two more reactors experienced a partial fuel meltdown at the site. It had previously been thought only the No. 1 reactor had suffered such a fate. The plant's cooling systems were knocked out by March's devastating earthquake and tsunami. The official death toll from the disaster currently stands at some 14,000 people. Klaus Peter Koltermann from the UNESCO intergovernmental oceanographic commission told RT that the Japanese authorities never did enough to prepare for the natural disaster that struck them.

UNICEF and European Union respond as climate change alters lives in Keny...

UNICEF correspondent Chris Niles reports on how climate change is altering the lives of traditional communities in Ethiopia and Kenya, and how UNICEF and the European Union are working with them on sustainable solutions.